Child Poverty Bill

My Lords, we are now venturing into a Dadaesque land of the absurd. There are two Bills before the House using the expression "socio-economic disadvantage". Unfortunately, neither defines the term and the responsible Ministers in both Houses have made a virtue of this fact. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said: ""We want socio-economic disadvantage to be considered in a common-sense manner in a way that is relevant to each public body's functions".—[Official Report, 11/1/10; col. 328.]" The Minister told us that in the context of this Bill it relates to, ""a child's access to material and social resources, and their ability to participate in society".—[Official Report, 21/1/10; col. GC 182.]" The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, told us: ""It is partly about basic inequality—that is straight poverty—but it is also about the lack of aspirations and expectations and about the complex interplay of factors such as health, housing, education and family background that so often combine to keep people in poverty and limit their chances of upward … mobility".—[Official Report, 11/1/10; col. 328.]" I thought that we were writing law here and I am baffled as to how such a portmanteau definition as this can really be pinned down. Let us say that I am a local official on whom the duty of ensuring that children do not suffer socio-economic disadvantage is imposed. What do I do? I know that I will be reading guidance notes until the end of time because the guide warns me to expect that, but how do I defend myself against the accusation of dereliction? Can I say that I thought that I had reduced socio-economic disadvantage enough—but what is enough? How do I set the duty of reduction against other priorities that might be pressing on me, such as getting a piece of infrastructure built to time and budget? How many forms will I have to fill in to make sure that the buck does not stop with me? How many boxes should I tick? How much case law will I have to study to see how the courts interpret "socio-economic" in the common-sense manner that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, is so confident that they will? I have noticed that one man’s common sense is often another’s madness. Therefore, in this amendment I am seeking to pin down what we mean by "socio-economic disadvantage". It seems to me that we are developing a body of indicators about child well-being that may serve the function very well. These are the UNICEF measures of well-being. If we use these as a base, we can assess whether child well-being in the widest possible sense is improving. We can measure our performance and we can target specific actions to improve that performance. If we combine poverty and child well-being measures, as this amendment suggests, we will really start to get a handle on the problem. This is particularly important because, according to Professor Jonathan Bradshaw of the University of York, we are simply not getting the outcomes in terms of child well-being that our relatively high expenditure on children should obtain. In simple words, we seem to be wasting a lot of the money devoted to our children. The combination approach is vital. I quote Professor Bradshaw again, as I did in Committee. He finds that, ""the child poverty rate explains only about 30 per cent of the variation in overall wellbeing"." He concludes that, ""the relative child poverty rate which has been adopted by the EU as the only child related primary or secondary indicator of social inclusion is not adequate to represent variations in child well-being across the EU25"," and that a multidimensional index is likely to be the best approach. The sad truth is that we do not seem to be doing well on these measures of well-being. The Government may be reluctant to accept the UNICEF-style well-being assessment because they have done so badly on this measure—as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, reminded us earlier this evening. Though the Minister defended the Government’s record by arguing that the data were old, the 2007 UNICEF table of 21 rich countries makes sorry reading. We are not half way down these tables; we seem to come out bottom on virtually every measure, including family and peer relationships, behaviours and risk, and subjective well-being. That means our kids feel more miserable than anyone else’s. We are only just off the bottom—18th—in education and material well-being. If we want specific goals to tackle socio-economic disadvantage, let us start here. That is my common-sense definition of the term. Perhaps the Minister will tell me I am mad. I beg to move.